The Syracuse Post Standard has a long story today about the fiscal situation in cities and towns across the state of New York. It’s a real mess. Many municipalities are laying off police and fire personnel. Some are raising taxes, and almost all of them are turning to Albany to bail them out. Few are talking about doing anything to get to the root of the problem.
Mayor Stephanie Miner says Syracuse is near a financial crisis, but instead of raising taxes and gutting city services, she’s asking Albany leaders to rescue Syracuse and other cash-strapped cities.
Miner is not the only mayor looking toward Gov. Andrew Cuomo and other state leaders for more help paying rising pension and health-care costs that far outweigh local property and sales tax receipts.
But some other mayors — whose cities appear in more dire straits than Syracuse — aren’t waiting for Albany. They are cutting police and firefighter jobs and parks staff and reducing swimming pool hours to try to get through the next year. …
But Miner doesn’t want to use the same tactics in Syracuse, at least not yet. She says those types of cuts would hurt local residents and programs without solving the multimillion-dollar problems facing cities.
Consider this: Raising Syracuse’s property taxes by 1 percent would raise an extra $335,000. To pay the city’s $30 million pension bill, property taxes would have to jump by 100 percent. Or, put another way, Miner could eliminate the entire city fire department, another $30 million cost, to come up with the money.
“When you have a multimillion pension bill, the math doesn’t work,” Miner said. Cutting entire swaths of city government? “I don’t think the symbolism of it carries the day.”
Read the whole thing. Did anyone quoted in that article mention a solution to the problem that I missed, other than hoping for an economic upturn to bring in more revenue? They’re all so afraid of the unions, they refuse to recognize the mammoth elephant in the middle of the room. Heck, they won’t even do the one thing that would guarantee bringing in more revenue to state coffers.
The single largest drain on America’s economy is unfunded liabilities. The source of those liabilities is entitlements whether one cites Social Security, including supplemental programs, Medicare, Medicaid, public and private pensions and all manner of promises made that do not reflect the principles upon which our nation was founded.
Until a majority of Americans come to realize we cannot continue down this road to ruin it is unlikely we will recover. I am only hopeful because trends over the last few years suggest we may be nearing the point of redemption politically.
2012 will not be the year that solves all these problems but we can decide to push POLS in that direction. A successful outcome in the 2012 elections will only be realized if the majority of those in the next Congress and White House have the courage to do what is necessary. And it really doesn’t matter what political party they are in as long as they abandon old strategies. Democrats and Republicans have ‘engineered’ a system that got us here. And we, as willing accomplices for one reason or another have aided and abetted their malfeasance.
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It amazes me that so many cities and states can not recognize the problems inherent with placing such a financial burden on their government coffers. Common sense seems to be sadly lacking.
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The canary died in the mine a long time ago and it was an indicator of things to come. Instead of fixing the problem, the public unions demanded more and the public officials gave them what they wanted for their votes. As far as the municipalities looking to Albany, forget it they have their own problems with unfunded pensions.
New Yorkers, don’t feel like your alone because you can bet California is probably worse off then you are. After all some cities have already declered bankruptcy.
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Don’t even try to tell me that these towns don’t have some “management” positions, such as Assistant Deputy Diversity Coordinator, or other useless job, that could be cut instead. There is NO reason to cut police and emergency services except as a scare tactic.
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[...] Walker here in New York. It’s a mess and all of the politicians acknowledge the mess but nobody ever mentions the elephant in the room.google_ad_client = "ca-pub-1395656889568144"; /* 300×250, created 8/11/08 */ google_ad_slot = [...]
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